Amazon to move onto the High Street?

What an irony - Amazon may have been responsible for the demise of thousands of book shops, including Borders last week, but are now looking at opening high street stores themselves. As one of the few survivors of the dot com boom, they have fantastic online sales statistics - the international arm, which includes the UK, increased sales by 33% to $2.6 billion in the three months to September 30 and the US group has forecast growth of between 21% and 36% in its final quarter across the business. However the suggestion in this report from Times online (read it while you can, before it ceases to be free!) is that while they only sold books and CD’s, which could easily be delivered through a letter box, postal delivery was fine, but now that you can buy anything from a bicycle to a food processor, delivery is more complicated. Also, other retailers who use online sales as well as stores, like Argos, John Lewis and Tesco, suggest that many customers prefer to order online but collect from the store rather than wait for delivery. So perhaps we will see Amazon moving in to the stores recently vacated by Borders…..